I found that with VS2017 it is available 50$/per month Azure credit. I have never worked with Azure before, but have a little experience with CloudFoundry. It seems a good chance for me to try Azure now. So, my question is what I can obtain with 50$/month? Is it enough for small ASP .NET Core web-site, database, some services into docker containers, just to play with these?
Thanks
Yes. You can play around these services.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/credit-for-visual-studio-subscribers/
Credit for use on a wide range of Azure services. Virtual Machines, Storage, SQL Databases, Containers, Cognitive Services, Functions, Data Lake, and much more.
Azure dev/test pricing helps your credit last longer.
Exclusive access to Windows 10 virtual machine images.
Easy sign-up. No credit card required.
No surprises. A spending limit protects you from overage charges. You can remove the spending limit when you’re ready.
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I have a non-commercial small project built on top of Parse Server. I really like it and don't want it to die, but since it makes me no money I don't want to spend anything on it neither.
Free plan of Parse suits me tottally. 30req/s is ok for me (I don't even cross 5req/s I guess).
Is there a service which supports Parse migration that can allow me to stay on the same (or at least close) pricing policy?
Microsoft Azure announced support for Parse. Azure App Service does have free plans but there will probably be some minimal costs (probably pennies) for ancillary storage services and bandwidth. I would suggest starting a 1 month free Azure trial and seeing how it goes if you don't already have Azure credits through an MSDN subscription.
I have an Azure Cloud Service published at Microsoft and it's draining all my credit!
Payment
Pay as you go
Service resource
Minimal resource, 1 SMALL web role and 1 SMALL worker role.
I knew Azure wasn't cheap, but this is just too much. Currently my monthly cost is just under 80 USD. The only person that use this service is me, noone else, and I barely use it. So the cost is just for the upkeep.
Is this normal?
70 bucks a month!?
How much does it cost for YOU?
What Microsoft support told me
I am afraid the Cloud Services has a fixed price, and I am not aware
how it could be lowered. Maybe you want to check on how the service
itself could be tweaked to get it working as per your needs. You may
want to go through the Community Forum for that.
Community = Stackoverflow, so here I am!
If I look at my Azure subscription page I can see that it's the:
CALCULATING HOURS - Europe, Western
That is taking all my hard earned money. My service also uses SQL, storage and cache but, if I understand it correctly, these are not the cause for my expensive bill.
Before I leave you to it I just want to say that I can't use a simple web app because of my requirements. I know web apps are super cheap, but in this case I must use a cloud service..
Thank you
Update
I found out I was using A1 (small) and not A0 (extra small). The instance type for a cloudservice can be set in the servicedefinition file.
It's sad that not even Microsoft themselves could inform me about this.
Web and worker roles are like dedicated VMs if they are on, they will cost you money.
You can do one of two things
1) Stop the machines when no one is using them ( say in the off business hours). I am not sure if this is possible to do or not in your case. But if it is possible, you can run a small script to start/ stop the roles. You can even do so via apps on your phone. For example - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/azure-management/id826446897?mt=8
2) Move to Azure Web Apps and Azure Web Jobs - Both these services are "multi-tenant" and cost much less and in fact offer a free tier. If and when you need to scale, you can always scale as your need
Hope this helps
I am using a normal IIS web host to host my website and web services.. It is just a hobby and I get very little traffic. I would let to be using Azure instead since I would like an excuse to learn azure.
Is anyone out there using Azure in this way and can tell me about what is thier monthly cost? I long ago subscribed to azure and forgot about it and a month later had a $90 bill so that really scares me.
Right now my web host + sql is about $25 a month.
Is there a way to have azure shut the service off if it gets over a certain monthly cost?
Well, even a very small instance costs $0.05/hour, and the SLA is only guaranteed if you run two or more instances. That in itself adds up to approximately $75/month.
SQL Azure is at least $9.99/month. Add to this charges for traffic, etc.
There are reasons why the SQL Azure pricing model is like this. You do get your very own virtual machine instances with dedicated RAM, which you typically don't get in a web hotel, so taking that into account, the Azure price may be reasonable, but isn't very competitive for very small hobby sites.
The official price list is here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/
Unfortunately, Azure is not designed to host hobbyist sites. You won't be able to beat $25 a month, but then you don't need things like SLA's and HA databass. But, as I commented earlier, it is nice to be able to work with it to train up on the platform.
There are ways of getting onto Azure cheaply.
Firstly There is the free introductory offer. Very much a "toe in the water" just to play/learn the platform. There aren't enough compute hours to host a site.
Secondly, if you're prepared to put in a little effort you can join either the partner or Bizspark programs which will give you access to enough resources to host a site for free, but there is an expectation that you're trying to build "something".
Oh, and for a hobbyist site you don't need the SLA so a single instance is fine.
I'm considering to join the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special, but I'm a little bit afraid of losing money with it. I don't wanna develop any fancy large scale application, I want to join just to learn Azure and do my experiments, what should I be afraid of?
In the transference, it says: "Data Transfers (per region)", what does that mean?
Can I put limits to stop the app if it goes over this plan in order to avoid get charged?
Can it be "pre pay" instead "bill pay"?
Would it be enough for a blog?
Any experiencie so far?
Kind regards.
As ligget pointed out, Azure isn't cost affect as a host for an application that can be easily deployed to a traditional shared hosting provider. Azure's target market are those that want dedicated resources without the need to micro-manage the infrasture and the capability to easily scale up/down based on demand.
That said, here's the answers to the questions you posted:
Data Transfers are based on bandwidth in and out of the hosting data center. bandwidth for communication occuring within components (SQL Azure, Windows Azure, Azure Storage, etc...) in the same datacenter are not billable.
Your usage is not currently capped when the free quotas are used up. However, you will recieved warning emails when those items approach their usage threadsholds.
There is the option to pay your subscription using a PO, but the minimum threshold for most of these operations is $500/month. So as a hobbyist, its unlikely you're wanting that route.
The introductory special does not provide enough resources for hosting a 24x7 personal blog. That level includes only 25hrs of compute resources. Each hour a single instance of your application is deployed will count against this, even if the application received no traffic. Think of it like renting office space. You still pay rent on the office even if there are no customers there.
All this said, there's still much to be learned with the introductory special. The azure development tools allows you to work with Windows Azure and Azure storage locally and get a feel for how they work. The introductory special then lets you deploy those solutions so you can see what works and what doesn't (not everything that works locally works hosted).
I would recommend you host your blog somewhere else - it's a waste of resources running it on Azure and you'll find much cheaper options. A recently introduced extra small instance would be a better choice in this case, but AFAIK it is charged separately as of now, e.g. even when you have an MSDN subscription those extra small instance hours do not count towards free Azure hours that come with the subscription.
There is no pre-pay option I know of and it's not possible to stop the app automatically. It'll be running until the deployment is deleted (beware! even if suspended/stopped the deployment will continue to accrue charges). I believe you will be sent a notification shortly before reaching your free hours threshold.
Be aware that when launching more than 1 instance you are charged for every hour of every instance combined. This can happen for example when you have more than one role in your Azure project (1 web role + 1 worker role - a separate instance will be started for each role).
Data trasfer means your entire data trasfer: blobs/Table storage/queues (transfers between your hosted service and storage account inside the same data center are free) + whatever data is transfered in/out of your hosted application, e.g. when somebody visits your pages. When you create storage accounts and hosted services in Azure you will specify a region that will be hosting your account/app - hosting in Asia is slightly more expensive than in Europe/U.S.
Your best bet would be to contact Microsoft with these questions.
Azure itself is imo PaaS and not IaaS. Do you agree?
MS gurantees an availability of 99% and a strong consistency. You can find MS SLAs here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sla
(three SLAs Uptime: http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/4889/unbenanntqt.png ) I can't find anyhing about how they are going to archive that. Do they do backups? If Yes: How do they manage consistency? According to the Cap theorem (http://camelcase.blogspot.com/2007/08/cap-theorem.html
) their claims are not realistic.
2.1 Do you know detailed technical stuff about the how they are going to realize the claims about consistency and availability?
On the MS page you'll find three SLAs .docs, one for SQL Azure, the second for Azure AppFabric/.Net Services and the third for Azure Compute&Storage.(Screenshot in 1.) How can one track whether SLAs are violated? Do they offer some sort of monitor, so I don't have to measure the uptime by myself?
1) Azure is a classical "Platform as a Service". I agree
2) 99% is not a very high availability. It means that Azure is allowed to be 3 full days down per year. The blog article you referenced is IMHO quite suboptimal. There is another one that explains the CAP theorem in more detail.
In answer to your first point, MS itself calls Azure the "Windows Azure Platform", so its status as PaaS seems self-evident.
In response to your question about backups in the second point, one of the main promises of cloud computing is to allow you to ignore the administration of the resources. They promise safe data, it's up to you as to whether you trust them, but if you want to know exactly how they implement it, you're missing the point of the cloud abstraction.
The third point is more interesting, but I would assume it's up to you to pay attention (write monitoring software?) to whether they live up to their SLAs.
"Will Microsoft add VM functionality to Windows Azure to expand the set of existing applications that can be run on it?
Yes, Microsoft will add Virtual Machine functionality to Windows Azure to expand the set of existing applications that can be run on it. This Virtual Machine deployment functionality will enable developers to run a wide range of Windows applications in Windows Azure, while taking full advantage of the built in automated service management." ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/ )
thus MS is planning Azure to become IaaS.